Matthew Linkletter, the Director of the Athens School Board, in Maine, has called for the local school administrative district to drop evolution from its high school science curricula. Why? Because it’s an “unprovable theory and shouldn’t be taught as fact”. Ah, that tired old argument again.
Linkletter believes that neither evolution nor creationism belong in a high school science curriculum, because they cannot be proven.
Mike O’Risal takes an in-depth look at this over at Hyphoid Logic: part 1, and part 2. The issue here isn’t just one more creationist spouting nonsense and broadcasting their cluelessness. Problems like this need to be addressed before they turn into big fights. After all, those who suffered most in the Kitzmiller case were the people of Dover, Pennsylvania. Mike writes:
When the argument in Florida was going on, one of the first rumblings was at the county level, when some members of the Polk County school board led the way in putting forth a resolution objecting to the state’s new science education standards. That’s not unlike what’s happening right now in Maine. In the case of Polk County, the Creationists backed down when people got involved and let them know that they were under the microscope. In Florida, there’s a hugely influential, well-funded, centralized fundamentalist church and a whole lot of its adherents in state government. Maine isn’t the same situation in that regard, but it should not be taken for granted that what has happened elsewhere couldn’t happen in northern New England. Just as was done in Polk County, people need to let Matthew Linkletter and Roy Blevins and whoever else needs to know that the eyes of the rational world are upon them. The best time to treat cancer is when the tumor is just a few cells. Leave it untreated and it will spread. That principle needs to be applied to School Administrative District 59 in Maine, too. Some contact information, and links to more, are provided in this entry.
So far, he has been unable to get this on the radar. His first post, on May 6 (which I completely missed) seems not to have attracted much attention. But this is the kind of issue that really needs to have someone shine some light on it.
Filed under: Anti-science, Creationism, Politics |
Further thoughts 
Frankly, the most disturbing thing about this is that it is occurring North of even where I am. If this is happening in the North East of the United States that gives a real indication about how bad it is in general (although Maine is definitely more backwoodsish than say Massachusetts or Connecticut).
I’m headed for Maine in a couple of weeks. Maybe I should be looking for the loons in Athens instead of on Moosehead Lake–they’re probably loonier in town.
[…] school district’s assault on science The blogs are ablaze with a school district in Maine whose director wants evolution expelled from the curriculum. […]
You folks don’t know what you’re talking about. I went to school there, I went to the guy’s church. Matt Linkletter isn’t some radical bible thumper – he’s a smart guy. He didn’t make this assertion as some decree, he simply tabled a motion at a school board meeting – the board has yet to even discuss the issue.
Further, Matt isn’t saying “teach creationism or drop both” as you erroneously headlined (so I guess anyone can be a “journalist” on the internet eh?). He quite clearly indicated that neither should be taught. Do I agree with him? No. But it’s buttheads like you who MAKE IT AN ISSUE, as though there’s some life and death struggle between science and religion. Big news flash: science leaves room for god – you’ll never get rid of it, and you give us science teachers a bad name when you try.
[…] its high school science curricula.? Why?? Because it??s an ???unprovable theory and shouldn??t be thttps://ianramjohn.wordpress.com/2008/05/11/creationism-in-maine/OUR DUMB STATE III: STILL STUPID Orlando WeeklyAnother edition of our semi-regular compendium of […]
Virginia,
There really is a Santa Claus!
Ron
The Evolutionist and the Creationist and all the rest of you people have got to stop worrying about where you came from and wake up. The world’s population is now 6.8 Billion people. Experts predict by the year 2050 the world’s population will be 9.1 Billion people. That will be an increase of 2.3 Billion people in just 41 years. The United States population is now 305,000,000 people. The U.S. had an increase of 11,000,000 people from 2003 to 2008. That means if 1,000,000 people committed suicide every year for the next 5 years the U.S. population would still increase by 6,000,000 people. In Japan they have already cut back to one child per family. And even then their population will still continue to grow. If there is poverty and starvation now what do you think it will be like in 4 or 5 hundred years? Scientists have already said that there is a hole in the ozone layer. If people continue to over populate and the ozone layer disappears your future generations are going to suffer one hell of a disaster.
When the earth gets piled up with about 50,000,000,000 people and the ozone layer disappears your generations are going to see hell like they’ve never seen hell before. It will be like a freight train going 200 miles an hour running into a steel wall 100 foot thick. There won’t be any survivors. There are only two ways to stop this from happening. The first way is to stop creating and tell your children when they grow up not to create. The second way is to get about 6,000,000,000 people to committ suicide and leave the other 800,000,000 people behind to repopulate. So if you do not do anything and your generations don’t do anything then there will be “HELL” on earth. When that hell happens there won’t be anyone there that I have created. When I go to the dust I am taking my generations with me. And I would advise you to do the same. Suicide or stop creating. BS